1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to tray dispensing devices. More particularly it relates to a tray dispensing device for molded trays of a variety of sizes which retains a stack of nested trays and dispenses individual trays from the nested stack.
2. Description of the Related Art
Trays for dispensing food items are widely known. Automatic tray dispensers for use in the packaging of such food items may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,116, Adjustable Tray Dispenser. Similarly, the following ten United States patent describe denesting devices which utilizes suction at some point in the apparatus: U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,623,236; 6,159,322; 5,704,194; 5,700,004; 5,133,169; 5,064,093; 5,013,213; 4,991,741; 4,350,466; and 4,260,311. However, a problem has remained in the tray denesting field for accurately separating one tray from a stack of trays, for preventing jamming of such denesting apparatus and for denesting trays having irregularly shaped surfaces thereon. In addition, although adjustable tray denesting apparatus have been provided in the past, no known apparatus includes automatic adjustment of the hopper for a specified number of different size trays.
It has also been known in the art to use suction devices from removing a single item from a stack of items. However, such devices have had the single item removed from the top o the stack. It was unknown to remove a single item, such as a tray, from the bottom of a stack using suction.